I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia, page 5
Instinctively, Mackenzie examined his surroundings as if he were at a crime site, and naturally, despite all the alternative stimuli, he spotted the book containing a million methods of meeting males. He held it up, turned it over, opened it. “Assigned readin’?” he asked.
“By my mother.”
Mackenzie nodded, then read out loud. What was it about this book that forced readers to recite its contents? “‘Find a church without white-haired people and join up.’” He raised his eyebrows almost to his salt and pepper curly hair. “There’s a certain religious spirit missin’, don’t you think?” He turned pages. “‘Choose a hobby men like. Buy or borrow somebody’s collection so you seem credible.’ My God! I thought you women were doin’ your own thing now, bein’ your own people. This sounds like the great white hunter in the jungle, catching critters and wearing camouflage!” He tossed the book back onto the sofa.
I felt as humiliated as if I’d written the rubbish myself.
“Your mom’s gone baroque, don’t you think?” He sounded mildly amused, but distracted, and then I saw he’d picked up the book my mother hadn’t sent me.
“Why?” he asked. It upset me that he was more shocked by my having a book on battering than a disgusting date manual.
“It was in the stuff donated to the Not-a-Garage Sale.”
“But why bring it home?”
“It’s underlined.”
“What are you, a fanatic? The English teacher tracks down the book defacer and gives him a detention?”
“Her. It belonged to a woman.”
He fanned the pages, stopping to read, but his only reaction was a frown.
“See the notes in the margin?”
He nodded and slapped the book shut. “Why’d you bring it home?” he asked quietly.
“Some woman’s in big trouble. Calling for help.”
“Oh, Mandy.” His voice was weighted with sorrow. “Don’t. This is none of—”
“How can I ignore it? Could you?”
“Domestic violence is the worst. The most dangerous call. Stay out of it.”
“But she says he’ll kill her. There’s a crime waiting to happen—happening!”
“There are always crimes waiting to happen. Stay away from them.”
“Does a person have to be dead before you care? This woman’s—”
“This woman’s a stranger. You’ll never find her. If she’d wanted to be found, she’d have written her name. She wanted to complain. Makes no sense to write an anonymous call for help. It’s a game, like hide and seek. A prank. Maybe even somebody who knows you and knows you’ll tool off on a wild goose chase. Or somebody writing a paper, underlining important—”
“The comments in the margin! How can you ignore them?”
Mackenzie is tall and lean and has a nice, slouchy Southern rhythm that often leaves me weak at the knees. But right now his posture and pronunciation both seemed infuriatingly casual. “Hey,” he said mildly. “Ease up. I’m not the one hittin’ on anybody. But assumin’ she exists, why hasn’t she gone to a shelter?”
“The book explains. I just read about it. It’s called learned helplessness.” I had to stop and find a tissue, but he waited, patiently unconcerned.
“They’ve done experiments,” I said, eager to make him understand. “Dogs were given electrical shocks no matter what they did. After a while, the dogs caught on that nothing would help them escape the pain, so they did nothing. Even when the cage was opened, they stayed where they were and didn’t avoid the shock. They’d given up, just the way that woman has.”
He raised an eyebrow and looked unimpressed.
I tried harder. “They did it with rats, too—held them tight until they gave up trying to move, and after enough of that, when they were put in water, even though rats can swim, they didn’t try. They drowned. They’d learned they were helpless, don’t you see? That’s exactly what happens to battered women.”
He nodded—grudgingly, I thought. “It’s awful, I understand, but that doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you,” he said. “Besides, this book could be old. These underlines could have been made any time.” He kept his voice reasonable, which made me angrier.
“The copyright is last year.”
“A year’s a long time.”
We had hunched and tilted our bodies and now stood tensely, like duelists facing off before the count. It crossed my mind that Jinx, the sugarplum fairy, probably never, ever disagreed or behaved in this unladylike a manner.
“What do you want me to do?” I shouted, hoarsely. “Wait until he murders her?”
“Calm down,” he said. There is nothing more infuriating than a man with nothing at stake telling a woman with a lot at stake to calm down. “You found a secondhand book that could have come from anywhere, could’ve been donated by one of a few hundred school families, or their friends, or somebody who left it in their beach house, or—”
“But what if you thought the person who donated it was—” I couldn’t finish the sentence or admit the book had come from Beth’s garage, but I wondered whether Mackenzie’s interest level would change if I dared to say so, or whether his work had given him an incurable compassion disability.
“Was what?” he asked. “Was who?”
“A person you cared about.”
He looked annoyed, as if I’d said something irrelevant.
My throat was tense, making it more acutely scratchy. “It doesn’t matter who it is—except it’s somebody in big trouble. Somebody who needs help.”
“Mandy, I—”
“You’re so damned smug!” It was useless. I couldn’t budge him physically or emotionally. I felt diminished and powerless. Put me in a tub right now, I’d drown along with those rats.
“You’d better hurry,” I said. “You’ll miss your trio.” He leaned over and kissed me on the temple. “Feel better,” he said.
I was glad to double-lock the door behind him and put all the chains across. Then I poured another brandy, chewed another vitamin C, and sat on the sofa staring straight ahead and holding the book on my lap. I felt exhausted, stupid, frightened, and helpless.
I felt a lot like the woman who had underlined the book, and I realized how easy it was to be made to feel like, even to become, her.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t at all easy to save her.
Five
TUESDAY LIMPED ALONG THE WAY THE DAYS OF THIS SHORT NASTY MONTH were wont to do. On its second day, a few counties over, Punxsutawney Phil, the oracular groundhog, had seen his shadow, predicted a long, hard winter, and gone back into hibernation. Groundhogs knew how to handle February.
My ninth graders discussed Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum,” always fun, and definitely the literary high of the morning, the rest of which was devoted to oral book reports and still more SAT preparation. I spent my lunch hour in my classroom with an apple and a warm Coke. I had yogurt waiting down in the faculty lounge refrigerator, but I wanted to be alone. I wanted to read the book on battering again, hear her again.
And last period, Rita came through and led a discussion of attitudes about women as reflected in Taming of the Shrew. Of course, she wouldn’t have phrased it that way, but I was nonetheless delighted. Even seeing WILLIE SHAKESPEARE IS A CHAUVINIST PIG scrawled on the board made me happy.
In fact, I felt altogether better today, more in control. I was going to handle the various crises of my life—money, sister, maybe even Mackenzie—in a reasonable order, and do what could be done. It all sounded sane and soothing, and even my cold had retreated to a dull occasional buzz in the ears and mind.
That’s why it was particularly irritating to have Helga the Office Witch disrupt the debate—by now a heated discussion of women, men, and power—with an embarrassed messenger who informed me that I must read his missive to my class. Immediately. I cleared my throat and followed instructions.
“‘Three pounds (bulk) of processed American cheese are missing from the cafeteria.’”
Derisive laughter slowly, inaudibly, bubbled up from the floorboards, like lava boiling below the surface.
“‘Miss Hagenfuss, our Chief Dietician, is very concerned about this and further evidence of pilfering (details of which are not being released at this time) and we wish to remind the students of this school that stealing is never to be taken lightly. If you have any information concerning this or related crimes, please remember that it is part of your honor code and civic responsibility to notify the office.’”
“Ooooooeeee!” somebody whistled from the rear of the room.
I handed back the note and walked to the window. Sometimes it calms me down to look out at the small park below and think about its long history and all the lives that have crossed it since Penn’s Greene Towne was first planned.
At the moment the square looked desolate. Old newspaper pages blew around empty benches. Lives were being lived elsewhere.
“Hey, kids, wanna know who the cheese thief is?” Joey Michaels’s voice worked better than the long shadow of history. I turned around and laughed, and along with them, I faced the fuddled, puny ninth grade messenger and sang, “M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U—” He left. We never did get all the way back to Willie Shakespeare’s problems, but we were close when there was once again tapping on the classroom door.
“Yo! What’s missing now? The macaroni to go with the cheese?”
But I opened the door on Neil Quigley, who looked likely to drop if left unsupported. I closed the door behind me and took his elbow. “What is it?” I asked. “Angela? Has something happened?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have to go. Yes. My class—could you cover…?” I glanced at the clock. There were only four minutes left to the school day. His class would disperse before he was out of the building and before I could get to them. He obviously hadn’t even noticed.
“Where is she? What’s happened? Can I help?”
“She?”
“Angela!”
“No, I meant something happened. Not to her,” he whispered. “It’s my center. My tutoring center. It’s gone.”
The poor man had snapped. “Neil, buildings don’t disappear. It was there yesterday and it’s there today. Please, sit down, have a drink of water, rest a—”
“Burned to the ground. They just notified me. Happened three hours ago. Took this long for them to track me down. I—I—I’m ruined. Absolutely ruined. Everything’s gone.”
“No,” I assured him, without any idea of what reality might be. “That’s terrible, but it’s insured, isn’t it? TLC will rebuild. You aren’t ruined.”
“You don’t understand. It’s gone. Everything.”
He was right, at least as far as my not understanding went.
The bell rang and Neil left, but first he turned around again and said, “Gone.”
And I still didn’t understand, but I was glad he was on his way home where, perhaps, he could simmer down in peace.
Shortly thereafter, I left for the mother of all TLCs, the office that administered all the franchises. I was accompanied by letters of recommendation, a copy of my college transcript, and my résumé. It had been a long time since I’d applied for a job, and I was nervous, but in a noncrucial way.
I fantasized the potential rewards of tutoring, beginning with the new convertible top and spinning far into lucrative mirages of trips to Europe and Tahiti—why not? Also an Oriental rug for the living room and even the jet-trimmed black silk evening suit in Bonwit’s window and a place to wear it.
By the time I reached the center, the fertile fields of my mind, or the fertilizer in those fields, had turned tutoring into the ultimate game show, with everything I ever wanted behind Student Number Three.
The executive offices resembled a furnished desert. Only the clothing and flesh of two waiting people, one rubber plant, and random carpet stains broke the monochromatic beigeness. On one pale chair a man with rich walnut skin examined his cuticles. On a café au lait love seat, an angular matron in brown plaid and a snit flicked through a magazine so vigorously, she ripped three pages while I watched.
A cutout in the wall revealed, with a little effort, a receptionist, also color coordinated. She held up a finger, stared at her amber computer screen, and pushed a button that made a soft blip, the only noise in the room besides paper tearing and impatient sighs. I tried to understand what she was doing. I’d just suffered through a required faculty orientation for the school’s new computer. Very little of it had penetrated.
Finally, the receptionist looked up, pushing back a lock of ash-blonde hair. When I told her my name, she nodded solemnly. “Mr. Teller’s running late,” she whispered, as if we were in a doctor’s office. “We’re so sorry. But you’re next—the others are waiting for Mr. Schmidt—so it shouldn’t be too long.”
On the wall, next to the rubber tree, was a framed copy of the Philadelphia Magazine article that Edie Friedman had mentioned. It was headlined TLC TELLS THEM HOW TO LEARN AND THEY PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE. Just as Edie had said, there was a flattering photo of Neil Quigley, typical happy professional franchisee. It seemed a horribly ironic choice, particularly today.
For lack of more interesting options, I read the article, one of those heartwarming all-American, upward and onward here-in-our-own-city epics. Poor but honest Wynn Teller had been bred in the Midwest, worked his way through state college, taught in various cities, then started the first Teller Learning Center, which multiplied and became a franchise. He was married to the former Lydia Ballantyre, only child of the late naturalist team of Lydia and Hubert Ballantyre. Lydia and Wynn were the parents of a son, Hugh.
His partner Schmidt’s background had a similar triumphant trajectory. His only liability, as far as I could see, was his name. Cliff Schmidt sounded like a sneeze, or a German aircraft. In lieu of a wife with scientific credentials, he had a background Dickens would have loved. He was an authentic foundling. Pure Horatio Alger. Pure PR gold.
After the statistics, there was a great deal of philosophizing about TLC’s ability to tailor education to the individual child, and about how gratifying it was to help both students and teacher-franchisers.
The article had the sound of a movie-of-the-week description. I was not thrilled, however, only bored. I saw the rest room down a short hallway and decided to follow Queen Victoria’s advice and use a facility any time one had the opportunity. My interview might be long or harrowing.
Upon my return, I passed the partners’ closed—camouflaged in beige—doors. The one with C. Schmidt on it failed to muffle agitated sounds like “cheated” and “damn it” and “screw you” and “criminal.” Not quite the vocabulary or tone I’d expected in an educational haven.
I sank into a small dune of a settee. The magazines on the dun end table all dealt with parenting, the better to increase the guilt of anyone with an underperforming child. In desperation, I read a column on bed-wetting, skimmed a list of great vacation spots for kids—so I could avoid them—and was studying the six early warning signs of eye-hand coordination problems when the front door opened with a great blast of deep winter.
And suddenly there was Technicolor in the room in the shape of a short woman capped by a white fur hat and wrapped in a poison-green greatcoat that reached to her ankles. “Where’s Wynn Teller?” she demanded of the room at large.
I happily discarded the magazine even though I had four warning signs left to go.
The receptionist stuck her head out into the room. “Excuse me? Do you have an appointment?”
The woman in the greatcoat laughed, a solid hah! like comic book characters make. “I don’t need one,” she said, waving her arms. One peacock, fingerless glove held a copy of Philadelphia Magazine, the other a green and blue lizard clutch purse.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, he’s—”
Ma’am slipped off her coat and hung it on a tan peg on the wall. “Tell him Fay’s here.” Her voice was pure brass, constitutionally incapable of being soft. She waved to the three of us on our beige upholstery as if she were, indeed, a visiting celebrity. “Fay,” she trumpeted again.
I put her at forty in years as well as chest, waist, and hip size. She was a sausage with cleavage and red-purple hair.
“Nonetheless, Miss Fay—” the receptionist began.
Fay rolled her eyes skyward. “Mrs., honey. I served my time.” She wore a layered black net skirt over a leopard body suit, a fashion statement generally made by rebellious girl-children twenty-five years and fifty pounds lighter. I snuggled into my seat with the same happy expectation I feel when a first act curtain goes up.
The receptionist was not as entertained as I. “If you’ll leave a message, I’m sure—”
“I left enough messages yesterday and the day before, and I don’t have forever. I’m only in town for the New Age festival.” She turned and addressed us, her audience, directly. “I’m an aromatherapist.” I felt she expected us to react by battering down Teller’s door on her behalf. You don’t keep an aromatherapist waiting.
“As I’ve said, he doesn’t have time today for—”
“We’ll see about that.” She sat down next to me with a scratchy crunch of tulle netting. She adjusted the neckline of her leotard and centered a chain full of amethyst crystals so that pale purple cylinders filled her cleavage. She smoothed the magazine on her lap, then looked up and pointed at the article on the wall. “Hah!” she shouted, as if she’d made an important discovery. She swiveled toward me. “You read that?”
I nodded.
“Good idea, wasn’t it?” She waved her copy of the magazine. It looked puckered with handling.
“Having the article? Great publicity for the—”
“I mean this place. TLC. This is the good idea. And by the way, you should wear rust and burnt oranges. You’re an autumn, you know, with the auburn hair and green eyes. I did colors before I got into aromatherapy.”
“Thanks.” I wasn’t sure if that was an autumnal response. I was sure, however, that orange was my least favorite color.
